


Those Who Walked Away

by lemurious



Series: Arda Forged [7]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arda Forged, Beleriand, Dark, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Moria | Khazad-dûm, Númenor, The Dark Side of Valinor, The Lost Maiar, Valinor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26313247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemurious/pseuds/lemurious
Summary: Melkor and Mairon were not the only Ainur outside Valinor. Who were the others who have left it, and what had compelled them to do so?This is a series of ficlets exploring the dark side of Valinor as a companion piece toJust As They Were, but focused on the Valar and Maiar instead of Elves and Orcs.Chapter 1: Flames of Udûn (The Balrogs)Chapter 2: Through the Cracks (The Blue Wizards)Chapter 3: Songs of the Sea (Ulmo and the Water Maiar)
Series: Arda Forged [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839175
Comments: 20
Kudos: 43





	1. Flames of Udûn

**Author's Note:**

> Part of Arda Forged 'verse, but as all other pieces in the series, can stand alone.

_(Flames licked at the brink and curled about the bases of the columns. Wisps of dark smoke wavered in the hot air...)_

Their ashen footprints remain embedded in glittering pavements of Tirion, and no amount of washing can erase the scorch marks along the narrow passage of Calacirya.

There was no place for them in Aman. 

Few would care to look in their direction with sufficient interest to recognize their shapes or realize that they had names beyond a moniker crafted to encompass an entire kindred. The Valaraukar were considered a pitiful aberration, a false note that did not get erased from the Song. A formless after-image of blinding light in silver halls, where their Maiar brethren circled their Valar like moths around a flame.

Until Melkor told them of a country framed in granite and ice, where they could carve their names in tongues of fire.

The Valaraukar suspected that behind his offer stood Mairon, that enigmatic former craft-Maia, forge-Maia, fire-Maia who, unlike them, managed to subdue his flames into serving his iron will. But could they truly care about anyone's hidden motives in their conviction that they could only serve as weapons, the first to be thrown at an enemy? 

The Valaraukar thought of death in battle as the only honor to which even they could aspire, and without a moment's hesitation they took their places in procession on the long march to Endórë.

(Much later, when Melkor was dragged away in chains, they carried Mairon back into the fortress and demanded his attention over the most minuscule of daily tasks to prevent him from falling into despair. When Melkor’s cries echoed along the shores, they marched in step behind Mairon at the head of their newly formed armies.)

\-----

_(Of all Elf-banes the most deadly...)_

But before the first battle was fought or the first fortress built, they brought their fire to the East.

A passing comment in Tirion had mentioned beings known as the Firstborn, created in a fleeting whim and dropped on dewy grass to wake up naked and confused, far beyond the notice or care of the Valar.

The Valaraukar refused to watch another Valar-forsaken kindred balancing on the edge of survival. So they did the only thing they knew: set the woods ablaze with light and heat, and taught the newcomers how to tame them.

(There is a reason why the Firstborn never speak of their Awakening. It would rekindle memories of hungry centuries that had preceded the gift of fire, and the kind of sacrifices that can be demanded as grim necessity when famine stares a family in the face, and their very lives in debt to those who they would later fight to extermination.)

\-----

_(From out of the shadow a red sword leaped flaming...)_

Eventually the Valaraukar learned strategy and tactics, and the value of their lives and those of their companions, and found themselves a place in the growing empire, working in its mines and foundries in addition to battlefields.

Though they only stopped considering themselves expendable after getting cornered in the Battle beneath the Stars, in what they thought would be their last stand - except that Mairon landed in front of them like a falling star, his steel-toed boots flicking sparks from the stones, his twin blades a blur, his face framed in dancing flames, contorted in a reckless scream of death and defiance, alone in front of an entire battalion. Mairon's honor guard soon followed, dropping from the skies like a hail of swords, holding the enemy back just long enough to ensure an orderly retreat.

Through the rest of the First Age the Valaraukar fought with the fury of a forest fire and the desperation of dying embers. And they lost.

\-----

_(The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep...)_

And empires rose on the price of mithril for Ages to come. 

The Valaraukar were the only ones who could mine it in the depths of the Earth, choking in the foul air, bent under the crushing pressure. Enslaved captains of broken armies, laboring beneath the great fortress of Dwarrowdelf, they built the Dwarvish hoards and endured cruel treatment with patience born of a defeat that had begun before the world was sung into being. 

And the entire time they kept looking for a chance to escape: to the East, or beneath the mountains, or, as a last resort, in a blaze of battle that would torch the skies.

\-----

_(The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn...)_

Now tales speak of ancient horrors asleep in cavernous depths until the world is mended, of spirits in Eastern deserts that make phantom cities appear in the air twinkling with heat.

It has never occured to the travelers that the towers reflected in their mirages are not located in neighboring kingdoms, nor even in the fabled lands beyond the Sea. Instead, they see Utumno, the first fortress of the Valaraukar and the most beautiful, sculpted in crystal and ice and flame.

Like sand between fingers, the mirages slip away, and all that remains are after-images of cities long lost, and half-forgotten myths of lesser gods bringing fire to people born in darkness.


	2. Through the Cracks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The origin of the Blue Wizards, and the fate they have chosen.

They were given a choice.

Either Eldar, and staying in Tirion with their family.

 _(Their family, who had marched them into the forest, told them that now they were lost, and rushed away. Who were killing each other as the twins found their way back and silently climbed the roof to peer down into the throne room. Their sister, the only one who cried for them, hoarse shrieks of grief for her lost brothers and, perhaps, for being destined to guard the jewel that everyone knew meant years of agony, as their remaining family dragged her to the Havens and left her alone, a war orphan with the Silmaril around her neck.)_

Or Edain, and leaving the Circles of Arda to fates unknown.

 _(But they had barely stepped into those Circles, and Valinor, the place of legends and bedtime stories, still felt more comfortable than a mysterious journey to join the kindred they had never even seen.)_

They were children, who should not have been forced to declare their choice, but declarations and oaths are what the Valar dealt in, and everyone who grew up in Aman knew the price to be paid for safety and prosperity.

Shivering, hugging each other in the boundless chamber that seemed to dissolve in twilight right at the edge of sight, the twins wiped their teary faces and blew their noses on their sleeves, and announced, as they had been taught _(just a few days ago – two small lifetimes ago),_ politely and clearly: _We choose to be our Great-Grandmother’s kindred, my lord._

Mandos raged and threatened, but these children had treaded anger and sorrow since they were old enough to walk. For the first time the Vala had learned that oaths could cut both ways, and two baby Maiar stumbled out of the hall, dressed in new blue coats that replaced the forest-stained clothes they had died in.

They were too young to realize that they were an aberration _(but had they not been one all their lives, born of generations of forbidden love, locked in a hidden city?),_ a curiosity in a land frozen for an Age in the perfection of glittering pavements and light blazing from the spire of Taniquetil. They did not fit in _(they had never fit in),_ but every Vala wanted to claim them for their court, so they grew up flitting from one hall to another, always in the background, always in the shadows.

The Blue Maiar of Almaren learned of justice watching Mandos force the Oath onto the last surviving Fëanorians, who had sworn it when they had been barely older than the twins.

 _(Sworn it out of love for their family, the children saw so painfully clearly, and secretly wished they could swear any oath to have a family that would brave an age of war with them.)_

As they watched their sister riding the winds, and their nephews being held through their nightmares, being taught how to fight, and to heal, and to trust.

( _Any oath, any oath, whispered the twins, who had grown up without feeling the hands of their parents, by kin or by choice, gently pushing them to take the next step, catching them when they fell.)_

As they froze in horror when Mandos calmly, irrevocably forced Maedhros and Maglor to burn in the pyres that his own doom had started, and closed the door to the only place where they could still find redemption.

They learned of kingship watching Manwë send his own Maiar armies to fight against the Black Foe, in a march beautiful and terrible in their righteous retribution, and celebrate a victory. And in a single final stroke drown an entire continent as a lesson.

_(They remembered caves and streams and twisted boughs in the woods, and blue forget-me-nots in late spring, blooming under their feet as they were left for dead, and the chorus of birds right before the dawn, and neighboring villages that tried to stay out of war, but war came to them anyway.)_

They learned of obedience in the corners of Aulë’s workshop, listening to calmly repeated orders, watching swords and chariots and lamps being wrought for every household in Almaren. Following Aulë each time he descended to his hidden foundry in the middle of the night, lost himself in beautiful shapes that nobody was ever meant to see, in grief made iron and regret cast into bronze. He mourned for so many: the children of his hands whom he had betrayed in fear, the greatest of his Maiar who slammed the door in fury at his cowardice and never looked back.

_(They tried to help. Oh, how they tried. But Aulë seemed to be waiting for forgiveness they could not provide.)_

They learned of fighting in the footsteps of Tulkas and Oromë, who rode through both Aman and Endórë with a bow and a sword and a whip and a spear, and animals fell before them, and Men and Elves were dragged behind them for their entertainment, and Orc bodies stacked in smoldering piles made them boast of cleansing the land.

_(They had seen the same joy and fury mingled in the face of the one who slew their parents, and slowly backed away.)_

They learned of growing and of grief with Yavanna and Nienna, who had closed their gardens and worked their hands raw and their eyes bloodshot trying to heal the scars inflicted by their siblings.

_(The twins were too proud, too hurt, too young to assume that kind of responsibility.)_

_(Nobody would answer their questions about Ulmo.)_

When a host of Maiar was sent to Eriador in the beginning of the Third Age, they begged the Valar for a chance to see their home once again _(fish were now swimming between the towers of their home, but the Valar did not distinguish between different corners of Endórë)_ , and after an intervention of Aulë's _(who had whispered to them a secret before they left, a plea answered by a promise of their own)_ they were allowed to step into the procession.

Their faces, dark-haired, grey-eyed, fit every story, and no company was surprised to find them in their ranks.

They even found themselves on opposite sides, once.

They hid behind many names. _(And whether each name was taken by one or both of them, who could tell; they looked and acted identical, after all.)_

A Ranger from the North, bearing a flag of Rivendell.

_(They met their family, unrecognizable, and found healing and compassion beyond hope.)_

The Mouth of Sauron.

_(They kept their promise to Aulë, whose apology was accepted by his former Maia with a wry smile, which, once the door was closed, turned into broken, hiccuping grief, but the twins were adept at listening at doors and entering where they were not expected, and they had learned comfort from Nienna herself.)_

The Blue Wizards.

And names from a tale that was still sung about them.

Eluréd.

Elurín.

They did not come back to Almaren.

Perhaps even now they roam the lands that had never heard of the Valar or lived in fear of those who held the Jewels, their fate _(finally, finally)_ reclaimed as their own.


	3. Songs of the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of Ulmo and his Maiar, and a singer on the shore.

He stretches out to the edge of his strength, to rivers and lakes and streams, and listens to the first Elves awaken with a word for water on their lips. They will name his realm and forever hear its call deep in their souls. Sirion. Narog. Teiglin. Eventually, Belegaer, when they see the ocean bend around them as they slowly make their way West.

The Secondborn receive no greeting, no vassal of the Valar invites them to spend eternity in the Undying Lands, unmarred, unblemished. The Men are more than blemished – they are hurt and scarred, and fall ill, and die, their lifespans too brief to be worth consideration.

And Ulmo rises from the waves, untold by legends, trying to help them survive on Endórë while their Firstborn cousins feast and build and rule in Valinor.

He speaks to them of water and protection from rain, of canals and irrigation, of the Sea and ships to sail it, of nets and harpoons, of salt and fish and preserving it to last the winter. He does not know much else, but at least they have a chance at survival now. These Men, who are bearing the brunt of Eru’s whim to force mortality on their heads without being asked whether _they_ would consider it a boon or a curse, and, Ulmo thinks, it is not fair, not fair at all.

Ulmo does not have to work alone. His Maiar are easily drawn to his cause, now they share streams and lakes, Ossë takes the surf and rapids, Uinen floats in marshlands and estuaries.

Until they are not the only ones talking to the discarded and the lost.

The most powerful and the most defiant of his siblings lands on Endórë in a shatter of light and begins building an army. Ulmo wonders whether he could serve in a kingdom of another, while Ossë pledges his allegiance with the certainty of tides and the rashness of a rip current, and Uinen is wavering, preferring quiet conversations with washer-women on both sides of the Sea to dams and locks and the power of a waterfall harnessed to run an empire; until swan-boats are burning and waves are flowing crimson, and the taste of blood and tears forces her to take sides.

The Valar are angry, betrayed, it is not long until his Maiar are dragged before their court, and Ulmo kneels on the cold dry marble, not a fountain, nor a puddle in sight, and tells his brother that, to prevent the Maiar from being sent into the Void, he will share the blame.

His name is erased from Valinor, his seat removed from their councils, the Sea – his home – turned prison when he is no longer allowed to speak to anyone from the waters. Ulmo sees a misfit empire rise in the North on steel and determination, and he is torn in two, for he once had taught both sides how to survive, and now he can only watch his children march to fleeting victories in an endless war.

He keeps waiting for a gap in his doom, for a loophole – and he is rewarded, he gets a chance to appear to an Elf, then a Man, sending him off to a hidden city, steering his ship through the treacherous currents, finally tearing a piece of his own life to give wings to one of the Firstborn who jumps off a wall into the waves wearing the same defiance he had seen at the gates of Utumno when the world was young. When she lands on the sand of pearls that still remembers the bloodshed from an Age ago, Ulmo feels joyful like a brook in the spring at having outwitted the rest of the Valar.

Their punishment comes down as his Sea is twisted from the inside, strangled and whipped into a giant wave that crashes on Beleriand – and Sirion and Teiglin and Narog are no more, no longer will he be able to listen to their streams, his only source of comfort when his speech had been cut off by the original punishment. His children, dead by the thousands under his own hand.

Now that the war is over, so is their sentence. 

Ossë and Uinen, searching for an outlet to their guilt, apply themselves to helping the Men once again. Ulmo watches, lends a hand occasionally, and begins to feel hope creeping back, as tall towers rise on an island, and bright sails are leading their ships Westward, their spirits indomitable.

The doom repeats. Ulmo’s Maiar are forced to take the lives of those they have tried to lead and teach and protect. As the island drowns under a wave, they are only allowed to bear a few ships to the land in the East, and broken by guilt and loss, they will not venture out of the deep seas ever again.

We should have known, Ulmo thinks, remembering when the rest of the Valar stood and watched as Eru made Aulë destroy his creations, there is a pattern to the punishment, except that some of us receive no clemency.

He hides in the depths for a while, but slowly, with the patience of droplets turning into stalactites, the walls of ice he built around himself begin to crack, and Ulmo returns to now-unfamiliar shores.

He attempts to make a song of grief and guilt, and one evening, he hears another voice, raised as if in response, and the same darkness of sorrow in its notes.

Ulmo rides the rising tide to the shore and sees a lonely, dark-haired Elf on the shore playing a harp with fingers blackened and withered on his right hand.

They speak of a moment's rashness of taking an oath that destroys your life in its keeping and makes you watch as it crushes the ones you love, of what it feels like when your hands are twisted to murder against your will, of condemning yourself to an eternity outside, alone, for fear that you could bring only death to anyone you meet.

They speak, and then they sing together, a lament for the lost, a song of salt and wind and waves.

They find a kind of courage in each other’s stories.

They both go Eastwards, when they part.

The Elf has heard of a place of healing that does not turn anyone away. The Last Homely House, it is called. He fights shame and guilt and terror threatening to drag him back with every step, making himself remember what Ulmo had told him of the flight of Elwing to Valinor, her blame mingled with gratitude, of his second – son, he still does not dare to think the word - on the shores of Númenor, who never stopped telling stories of his childhood, and these tales did not portray him as the monster he thought himself to be.

Ulmo weaves his song into the waves, and suddenly Elves get a Sea-longing they cannot understand, and build the ships that the Vala then guides on the perilous straight road to the West. Once, he even makes Anduin flow backwards when Men are mired in yet another battle at a white city, but he has learned from Gondolin and would never again ask the rest of the Valar for aid.

The Elves sing a lament for the Noldor, and the Maiar sing a lament for Beleriand, their noble goals and bitter defeats preserved forever. 

And sometimes an Elf and a Vala sing them together, alone on the shore late into the night, and a new dawn rises with a faint whiff of the wind from the Sea, whispering of hope and loss and remembrance.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are always very much appreciated :)


End file.
